Fimbul's Forum Posts

  • I'm prepared for that possibility, but I would be extremely curious as to how they solve the problem. The way I see it is it's to do with your target audience's training and education, and you can't improve people's training and education by programming alone.

    I'm thinking the next big thing in 3D tools will be a voxel-based game engine.

    • There aren't any of those on the market today, and most existing engines can't be adapted into working with voxels with native-like levels of performance
    • programming a voxel engine is a lot like traditional 2D programming (just add a Z coordinate and done, basically - it's as simple as an isometric game is today)
    • voxel art is just pixel art in 3D, and there are tools coming out that help with it
    • There isn't much catching up to do (you're basically trying to outcompete minecraft in terms of visual quality, which isn't hard at all)

  • Ashley has already stated multiple times that this won't be done by Scirra anytime soon (construct 5 maybe?). Even construct 3 (which is not even official AFAIK) is all but confirmed to not have support for 3D directly.

    If you want to do this by yourself, though:

    • It's a ton of work. 3D is hard. Good 3d is even harder, since you'd have to do a ton of catching up.
    • There are very established players on the market already, who charge very little and offer extremely capable engines
    • There are plugins for those engines that make coding easier or unnecessary
    • There is no proof that there exists enough demand to justify building this product
    • Backers are already weary of "game development engines with no programming required" kickstarters. Most of them failed or delivered underwhelming products.

    I'm not saying it's impossible (it's not), but there are many hidden gotchas. You really, really need to think this through.

  • So find a sexy girl wearing OR to prove your point You wont find one because they no longer have a face.

    There aren't many oculus rift promo pictures that don't involve people in trade shows, and most of those show only the DK1, so it's a bit hard. There is this. Quite sexy, but a bit dystopian since she isn't smiling.

    The samsung version is a bit easier, since they are samsung and thus likely to invest in that sort of marketing. See this

    If we take it back to the basics as in Roger's innovation adoption curve.

    [snip]

    I would say they are only at the innovators point so far and they are yet to get anywhere near the mass market and breach the chasm.

    Oh I absolutely agree. We aren't even at the point of early adopters yet since there are no consumer versions.

    Anyway, no point going on about it

    I disagree! We're reaching a consensus!

    but I will say if it does take off the world will become a very unsocial place

    Well the same happened due to TV, Smarphones, games... I think the world is becoming a very unsocial place due to technology in general, this specific tech will just be one more step in that direction.

    Here's a bonus for you:

  • I'm wondering how we'd get access to sensor data via javascript if it has a browser. The current specs are designed with PCs/tablets/mobiles in mind.

  • To be honest, you can strap a pretty girl into pretty much anything to make said thing look sexy. See:

    this image (too big to post directly)

    So I don't think a pretty girl says anything about the inherent fashion statement of such a device. Besides, I don't think IT people care about nerdy stigma, so power users would certainly adopt it.

    As for the general public, eventually it becomes "too good to miss", this happened before with smartphones - people now do incredibly impolite things like going on a date and staring at their phones instead of talking. The TV itself was once seen as divisive, and the concept of "family sitting in front of the TV" was seen as a sign the world was going to hell.

    You're right, though, that it will take a truly miniaturized device (like VR contact lenses, or the vr glasses posted above) to make it acceptable for people to wear it on the street, but I think we'll see this thing go through the following phases of adoption:

    • as a personal entertainment device (PED) by geeky gamers
    • as a PED by geeks (watching movies while alone)
    • as a PED by the general public (reading facebook while alone)
    • as a work device (WD) by geeks (replacing multiple monitors)
    • as a WD by power users (same as above, but now there are specialized drivers and software showing up)
    • as a WD for specialized technicians (think heavy machinery operators, pilots, remote exploration, analysts)
    • as a WD for business-types (for remote conferences and such), most likely in Japan first
    • as a PED in a group setting (watching movies and gaming with your friends)
    • as a WD in a group setting (virtual-reality collaboration, remote work)
    • as a permanent/semi-permanent wearable, including in public (by this point the device is probably so miniaturized it's barely even noticeable)

    Gartner's Hype Cycle curve should provide more insight:

  • Oh, BOM is a small tag that gets added to UTF-8 files, marking them as UTF-8. It's invisible in normal text editors, you can only see it if you open the file with a hex editor.

    Must have been quite hard to catch that problem!

    To fix it, open the file in notepad++ and go to encoding -> encode in UTF-8 without BOM, then save the file.

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  • I wonder how we'd get access to the sensors, like blood pressure, in those wearables. getUserMedia() doesn't seem appropriate. Ashley, is there something in the w3c already for those use cases? This is pure speculation BTW, we don't know if those devices will even have a browser.

    Realistically, the more viable option would probably be wrappers until the tech matures.

  • Like others have said, the SDK is the way to go for your friend. It's extremely easy to learn, he'll be up an running in a few hours.

    It also forces him to carefully consider dependencies, and code is naturally modular from the start. I think he'll love it.

  • This request can be summed up in:

    • Modularity
    • SVG Support

    I'm in favor of both.

  • TheWyrm, I see your point: the face-to-face interaction a family or a group of friends is used to is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon. I don't foresee you putting on one of those for watching a romcom with your girlfriend, for instance.

    But consider that for individual use, it can be quite acceptable. Also in an office setting, if your work is cerebral and not too reliant on others (think programmers, movie editing, analysts, etc), I really see this thing taking off.

    The above image represents something that is ridiculous, expensive, and quite common.

    This isn't too bad, and serves the same function, except it's better in all aspects.

  • They're supposedly lighter than some models of headphones, and people wear those for long sessions. I have no trouble imagining them being used by powerusers in office jobs.

  • Someone will probably make a way so you can view any 2D applications/games/movies as if you were viewing it on a massive TV/imax. (Although you'd probably want the oculus to be higher resolution first.)

    I have no doubt in my mind that this will happen. I use 3 monitors at work and at home, and with an oculus rift I could have something ridiculous like 80 borderless monitors. In fact, I think the entire notion of flat desktops might end with the rift - the desktop of the future might look more like a "headsphere', and that's considering current control schemes (keyboard and mouse).

    The rift will revolutionize book reading, movie watching and working.

  • More options to handle the case:

    • An error message pops up saying "the previous action can't be undone because actions XYZ depend on it". This makes sense since it would never show up in single-work mode (since actions are undone list-style). A dependency tracker for actions would also allow you to undo actions out of order, similar to the way photoshop does it.
    • The object is deleted, but the event remains, with a "ghost" reference in place. The project can be saved but does not compile, a warning appears in some sort of notification area, and does not go away until this is resolved.
    • Users don't actually edit in real time, instead changes are "merged" on each save, with a merge wizard informing the changes and asking for how to handle them.

    Also, IJCT, you might want to change the title of your post to "multideveloper" or "collaborative development", since "multiplayer development" means developing multiplayer games, which is not what you want at all

  • Its kind of a "Field of Dreams" kind of thing where they have to ask if it's really worth it financially. While it would probably lend itself to other types of games, for now at least it would be very niche, although I would say a very healthy portion of 2d games are platformers.

    A third party editor for making maps is doable, it just doesn't lend itself to the workflow, and I don't see someone putting the time needed into one unless they went commercial. Then that person would also have to ask "If I build it will they come?". Then there would be a ton of debate on what features it should have.

    Of course another option might be a community based editor where it could be forked for specialty enhancements.

    Also I don't remember a 3d demo, I bet that was Yann.

    Agreed with everything you said.

    I know quite a bit with regards to JS and the SDK, but there are many problems.

    Many plugins can't be made in a user-friendly way because the IDE isn't extensible enough, and even if the IDE could be extended, third-party addon's poor image makes me uncertain whether it would be a good idea to actually make them (would I ever see my money back?). Nowadays I'm not doing much with C2, since I've started making more money with database work than with gamedev work, so I no longer have any incentive to create addons that boost my own productivity - I was hoping the store would fix that, but now that it's not accepting plugins/behaviors I'm a bit bummed out.

    Here's a list of a few plugins that would greatly enhance level design, but can't be made due to IDE restrictions:

    • Path movement (displaying the path in the editor)
    • Better tilemap editor (with ability to set obstacle map, animated tiles, setting properties for each tile)
    • Isometric map editor
    • Interface creation tools/modular components
    • Boss/enemy patterns (finite state machine or similar)

    None of those can be made without including external tools that, like you said, don't fit well within the workflow.

    Ashley already stated he will look into updating the editor for construct 3. We'll see if that allows for better third party complements.

  • 1 - yes

    2 - no

    3 - yes